‘A difficult film to sell and a difficult film to appreciate’: MGM’s Alfred the Great (1969) and the challenges of promoting historical epic in the late-1960s

Williams, Melanie (2025) ‘A difficult film to sell and a difficult film to appreciate’: MGM’s Alfred the Great (1969) and the challenges of promoting historical epic in the late-1960s. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. ISSN 0143-9685

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Abstract

This article uses the case study of MGM’s 1969 epic royal biopic Alfred the Great to investigate changing ideas around film promotion, especially the promotion of historical film, during the moment of intense industrial and cultural change encapsulated by the advent of ‘New Hollywood’ in the late 1960s. Through an examination of contemporary documentation related to the film’s promotion, held in the director Clive Donner’s special collection at the BFI National Archive, this article explores the deep divisions between the promotional strategies envisaged and implemented by different factions from within MGM for Alfred the Great, driven by different beliefs about how best to bring a historical film about an ancient English king before its potential audience(s) in 1969, as long-standing assumptions about audience preferences were being rapidly overturned and the Hollywood studio system itself was entering what appeared at times to be a state of terminal crisis. These divergent beliefs drove a range of different promotional tactics, with different demographics in mind, and more traditional approaches came into conflict with new ideas represented by the approach of Mike Kaplan. Alfred the Great proved a ‘difficult film to sell’, in Kaplan’s words, with those difficulties illuminating the challenges in undertaking effective film promotion at this watershed time in Hollywood’s development, within a genre whose marketing scripts proved difficult to rewrite. This article offers an original case study of promotional conflict, impasse and ultimately failure, providing an object lesson for the historian as to the difficulties of working in this transitional moment within an industry increasingly insecure about who it was speaking to and how best to do it.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Funding information: This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under Grant AH/L014793/1 ‘Transformation and Tradition in Sixties British Cinema: Production Cultures, Cross Media Relations and National Branding’.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	film promotion and publicity,historical film,1960s hollywood
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Media, Language and Communication Studies
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Film, Television and Media
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	29 Oct 2025 16:31
Last Modified:	02 Nov 2025 07:31
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100845
DOI:	10.1080/01439685.2025.2574871

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